ABSTRACT
It has been argued so far that individuals and organisations may be seen as social actors and agents, capable of an autonomous reflective response to normative requirements. As such they may be held accountable as individuals, as organisations, or as either, acting within a group on the basis of their participation in that group activity. But what more precisely does it mean to say that they are being held accountable or responsible for their actions? Responsibility is a device for fitting actors and their actions into a normative framework: in so far as norms and standards impose obligations, the idea of responsibility is used to attach these obligations to particular actors within the normative order and work out more precisely the consequences of not fulfilling these obligations. In this way responsibility links a particular agent with a particular obligation and determines the consequences of thus linking the two together. A classic exposition of the working of responsibility has been provided by Hart and this now provides a key reference point in most discussion of the subject. Hart’s analysis is developed in this chapter by linking together more explicitly the four senses of responsibility identified in his account. Hart’s ‘role-responsibility’ may be seen as referring ‘externally’ to the actor’s place or office in social organisation, while his idea of ‘capacity-responsibility’ provides the ‘internal’ intellectual and psychological attributes of agency. Hart’s ‘causal-responsibility’ links the role and capacity of the agent with the event giving rise to questions of responsibility – it is the factual basis for that agent’s responsibility in that instance. Finally, Hart’s sense of ‘liability-responsibility’ refers both to the process by which responsibility is established and the end result of that process: the determination of responsibility (and so liability to sanctions) in a particular case. Organising the four senses, role (x) and capacity (y) 103responsibility are respectively the social and psychological foundations, and causal responsibility (z) the factual basis, for the allocation of responsibility as liability responsibility (r). Thus, (x + y) × z = r. Criminal responsibility is that kind of responsibility which is used to respond to the socially and morally serious problem of deliberate challenge to and undermining of crucial social ordering and cohesion.
